Experience: using a toilet
Related to feeling: comfort
Venue: Toilet located at WIG 052
From previous experiments and my own
extensive experience around people using toilets [1] there are several aspects
that take priority for most people in order to attain an acceptable level of
comfort in this situation. These are privacy,
hygiene, ample supply of equipment
for personal cleanliness as well as to be aesthetically pleasing and finally, an
acceptable odour. Any of these four
characteristics can take precedence depending on the circumstances of the
event.
For the purposes of this experiment I
recognised firstly that for a feeling of comfort to be evoked it would need to
be tailored specifically to the person(s) undergoing the experience. Since I feel
certain that Sarah Baker and Kath Foster would fall into a similar age category
to that of my own, and that culturally I would estimate that there would exist
between us a certain level of commonality I decided to use myself as the
benchmark for the audience. I have therefore taken the liberty of filling the
space with personal items that I find comforting. References to my deceased
father play a role in evoking nostalgia. Interestingly a search on the word
‘comfort’ reveals multiple references to bereavement (Shove, 2004).
Comfort in this instance therefore comes about by remembering life before the
pain of loss.
Privacy: Most people in western cultures would agree
that this part of the experience is vital in order to experience comfort. This
posed a problem right away since there would be two people participating and it
would be impossible to offer privacy if both used the chosen toilet at the same
time so I would need to make certain I could guarantee privacy by scheduling
each person’s visit and ensuring that the user felt at all times that their
privacy was not in question. I have also conducted noise experiments within the
room and have found there to be a good amount of sound insulation due in main
to the heaviness of the door.
Hygiene: Consideration of the ways in which
cleanliness is suggested in public spaces involved removing any obvious marks
on the walls, physically cleaning the toilet and sink and ensuring all other
surfaces were actually clean using Dettol (the faint odour of which might
reinforce the idea of cleanliness). As soon as the standard lamp was installed,
the room seemed perceptibly cleaner and the lighting suggested a more homely
atmosphere. This might imply that homes that seem clean and organised are
cleaner than institutional or public spaces.
Equipment: every item placed in the room had
significant meaning to me or was specifically there to further emphasise
privacy or hygiene. For example, the portraits were of me and my immediate
family, all taken more than a decade ago – the one of my mother was taken in
1958. The buttons were a favourite amusement form my early childhood, the
perfumes all favourites of mine as well as one of my mother’s bottles from her
youth. The magazines belong to my mother-in-law and have been passed on to me.
The main objective was to create an atmosphere of nostalgia and it is
surprising how effective a few items of personal significance can be in
achieving this. I left the items I had cleaned with the toilet brush and toilet
duck to suggest a home toilet. It is very unusual to see items like these in an
institutional facility. The music I played was via a Spotify playlist of Burt
Bacharach music – I consider this to be the ultimate in comfortable music
though not in a negative sense. It is highly palatable background music without
being ‘musak’.
Odour: as
discussed I had cleaned the bathroom to ensure its cleanliness and ensure the
remnants of cleaning product would instil confidence as to the standard of
sanitation. I also sprayed with a
vanilla scented room spray that always reminds me of cupcakes which in turn
reminds me of my childhood.
The
result: The overall effect
was one of homeliness and old-fashioned comfort. It was remarked on by at least
one participant that even though there was evident comfort, there was also a
sense of glamour which might be because we automatically assume that any
obvious care in an institutional facility is immediately associated with places
where toilets are glamorous.
I consider the orchestration of the
experience to have been a success as there was no confusion as to how the
audience perceived the experienced the space.
[1]
As previously discussed I founded and
was the owner/operator of a business in Australia that catered to for the
powder room needs of high-end/high-profile events in Sydney, Melbourne and
Brisbane. Started in May 2003 and eventually sold in August 2010, it unintentionally
provided me with a means for (informally) researching the habits and behaviour
of the general public when attending events in an exceptionally wide variety of
situations. It also led to my being acknowledged in the Australian events
industry as an ‘expert’ in toilets and evidence of this profile still exists
online (e.g. http://www.abc.net.au/catapult/stories/s1530529.htm & http://www.femail.com.au/oh-de-toilette.htm)The current owners’ website is located here: www.ohdetoilette.com.au
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